


falling angel, rising king

by spacecitytraffic



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: (mag is mentioned), Alcohol, Gen, Loss (mentioned), Original Character(s), Panic, Terrorism (mentioned), although who knows what the next episode will do to me, canon compliant as of now, content warnings include:, no beta we die like mag, nureyev backstory! nureyev backstory! let's go!, so canon-typical angst over that, teenage peter nureyev is on the run after the whole angel of brahma thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29905743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacecitytraffic/pseuds/spacecitytraffic
Summary: Peter Nureyev is... he's just a boy, really. A boy on the run. A boy who killed his father earlier today, and who really needs a place to lie low. But more than that, he needs kindness, even if it is from a stranger. And he needs a new name.This is the story of how he found all three.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 28





	falling angel, rising king

New Kinshasa’s red-light district is… a lot. The crowds, the noise, sights, the oppressive, lurching darkness. The only illumination here is a harsh, bloody glow—crimson like a memory, crimson like Mag, crimson like that awful metal room, crimson like...

Peter shakes his head and doubles his pace, bobbing and weaving and dodging his way through the crowd like a fish through water. No time for doubts, now. There are only three important things about this district: it’s dark, it’s crowded, and it’s extremely distracting. Together, these facts make it the perfect place to disappear.

Still, it is also incredibly overwhelming. The lights, the smells, the noise… But that’s all right, it’s fine, he just…

Then Peter slams into a tall, aging woman, and recoils with instinctive, shuddering panic. Every system in his body is overloaded. His muscles lock up, and he finds himself gasping for breath.

“Well, hello there.” Through the gloom, the lady arches a chiseled eyebrow in surprise, and slowly, Peter gathers that she works in this district. “Need anything, son? Can I do anything to help?”

“I, I don’t…” And then, looking at this woman who could be old enough to be his mother… something inside Peter clicks into place. The wrong place, but there’s not much he can do about that now.

He  _ knows _ he has to get off this planet, he  _ knows  _ he has to run run run runrunrunrun _ run _ , but--but God, he doesn’t want to. Not tonight. Not after today, not after everything happened and changed so fast and nothing really even seems real yet. Maybe for one night, he doesn’t have to run just yet. Maybe for one night, he can hide instead, until it all sinks in. Maybe for one night, he can pretend he’s safe, pretend he still has someone. 

“I have a question for you.”

She studies him, and scarlet shadows play over her bemused expression. “Fire away.”

“If I paid you… whatever it takes, to spend the night with you. If I did, then would we have to… well. Or, or could we just…”

“Spit it out, kid.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” Peter blurts out. “I’m exhausted, and I just want to eat something and fall asleep and be  _ safe _ for just one night in my life, and I don’t—want—to do it alone. So, I—I don’t know if you’d be willing to waste your night on something like that, but I’d pay you, I can most certainly pay you, I…”

Something in the woman’s face stops him. Maybe her eyes soften, maybe there’s a tired sort of pain in there that acts like a mirror to his own wild state. “Hey. If you pay me for a night, you get to decide what you do and don’t want to do.”

“So—is that a yes?” Peter is trembling now, feeling the crowds rush past him and hearing the hubbub of the whole world. 

“Honestly?” The woman studies him for a few seconds, then shrugs with a sigh. Her shoulders slump a little when she does. “A paid night off, nothing to do but just sit and eat? That sounds a little like a relief. So, what the hell. That’s a yes.” 

Something warm and painful blooms in Peter’s chest, like roots digging in where they shouldn’t, digging into bare and tender flesh. “I… thank you.” His hand goes to his pocket, and he fishes out a handful of creds he lifted from a crooked banker only that morning. Was it only that morning? A different light, a different life, a different Peter Nureyev. Is any of this even real? “This should be enough, right?”

The woman scans the bills, then nods and accepts all but two of them. “You’re a bit more well-to-do than you look, aren’t you? Dressing down to have a night away from your rich pop or something?”

Peter glances down at his torn pants, his too-big jacket pilfered from the back of a store, and aches. He places the extra money back in an inside pocket, zipping it up carefully. “No, I’m... not. Not well to do, that is. And I might never be again.”

At that, the woman just shrugs. “Isn't that the truth for all of us. Lasers?”

“Something like that, yes.” Peter presses his lips together, stifling a bitter laugh. “Come on, let’s find something to eat.”

“The market on Fifth and Shard?” she suggests, already striding that direction. She cuts through the crowd like a knife, but makes sure that she’s never too far ahead or too out of sight. This chaos is her element, just like it is Peter’s.

“You would know better than I would.” The boy hurries to catch up with her, jarring his aching joints with every jogging step on the cobblestones. “I don’t—if I may ask, what is your name?”

“Morgan,” she says simply, taking a sharp turn down a side street. The air here feels cooler, and there are marginally fewer people and lights. “Yours?”

Peter swallows hard and slows his pace, realizing too that his own name won’t serve him well today. “I, ah… I would rather not say.”

“That’s fair enough.” Morgan shrugs, not realizing that Peter has fallen behind. “So, as for the market. How about finding some moambe and moon-palm wine? I know a great vendor.”

“I don’t, erm. I don’t exactly know what those are,” Peter manages, trying to catch back up. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been on this planet...”

“Then I’ll just have to show you. You’ll love them, come on!”

* * * * *

Peter remembers at least some of the rest of the evening. The moambe was delicious. And the moon-palm wine was… well, it was incredible, but it was  _ not _ what he should have been drinking at a time like that. Or perhaps it was exactly what he needed. The memories surrounding that particular matter are… blurry. 

He remembers sinking onto a couch at some anonymous hotel, tearing into the food in shaky adrenaline-fueled desperation, letting it sink spicy and piping hot into his hollow chest in a strange imitation of real warmth. He remembers laughing too hard and too hysterically at Morgan’s dry jokes as she sat there beside him, pouring the first glass. Then the second. Then the third.

He remembers the momentary look of pain and shock and concern in her steely eyes when he said something--he wishes he could remember what. She tried to take the wine away. She’d said something about… she said his name. He must have let that slip. Oh. That’s… that’s not… 

He remembers sobering up on those couch cushions. Not much, but a little.

“Do you believe in anything,” he’d murmured half-blearily, slumping against the arm of the sofa. The coarse fabric dug into his cheek, like… like… like something else, he guessed. Metaphors always go like that, don’t they? He needed a metaphor right now. He needed...

“What do you mean by that?” Morgan had replied without batting an eyelid. 

“Gods? Fate? Anything that… that happens? After you die?” Under the harsh hotel lights, he could see the red red red redredredredr _ ed _ there, there, right there on his sleeve corner. Red like… like lots of other things, he supposes. Didn’t manage to wash that out. Fuck.

“Why? You been acquainted with death recently?”

“Mmm.” Peter had leaned forward to grasp for the glassy glinting gloomy green bottle, but the stupid, dumb, du… du _ plicitous _ , that’s the word, thing, had swayed and doubled and, and, and  _ dissembled…  _

“No more of that, now.” Morgan’s hand had whacked his arm lightly, and the touch had sent shivers spiraling sideways through his skin but oh, oh...

And then somehow he was leaning into the contact and slumped against her side and shivering and shuddering and even half-sobbing against her shoulder and...

And she had put a strong arm around him and whispered just like Mag just like Mag just like  _ Mag  _ and it was okay for just…

“I do think something does happen when we die,” she’d murmured soothingly, rubbing circles on Peter’s tense tight shuddering back. “I think we become something. Something free. Maybe energy, maybe stars, maybe even angels.”

“Angels…”

“Yeah, angels. Go to sleep, Peter.”   
  


“No, no, but  _ angels… _ ”

“It’s okay. Good night, now.”

  
  
  


* * * * *

  
  
  


It’s four in the morning, and Peter is once again the master of his own senses. Regrettably enough. Standing there in front of the hotel’s cold window, he stares out at the lights of the city. The sky is hazy with smoke and ozone, making a mockery of sunrise by blurring the yellow streetlamps up onto the horizon and fading out the blue dark. But the sun won’t arrive for hours yet. It’s just a trick of the laser-polluted New Kinshasa air. 

False sunrises are something he’s grown more than familiar with, he thinks to himself.

Peter is picking crumbs of dried moambe sauce off his shirt, swallowing hard in an attempt to banish the aftertaste of palm wine from his thick tongue. The radio plays quietly behind him as he prepares himself to leave. To disappear without a trace.

_ “...degrees, and a high of eighty seven, unless _ — _ hang on. Hang on, I’m just getting a special bulletin…” _

Nureyev’s spider fingers freeze on the cuff of his sleeve. If he rolls it up enough times, the blood won’t show, but...

_ “...oh. Oh. Listeners, it seems that there has been a… a terrorist attack on our city’s great defense systems…” _

Oh.

He has to go. He has to go now.

_ “...details as yet unclear, but investigation agencies advise all citizens to be on the lookout for a young man calling himself Peter Ransom or Peter Nureyev, five foot eleven, fifteen to nineteen years of…” _

Peter whirls around and grabs his coat, about to rush out the door and never ever ever come back, when something stops him. Morgan is sitting up on the couch, gray eyes mournful. 

“Is that you they’re talking about?”

Peter swallows. “How—how much did I tell you? Last night?”

“Just the name Peter. Just that you hadn’t had a good day.” But Morgan’s gaze drifts to the crimson-spotted sleeve nonetheless. “I… was able to infer a little, though.”

The world is pounding, Peter’s temples are pounding, the radio is still cataloging and dissecting his every physical quirk like he’s some cow up for auction. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“I don’t see the reason why it would necessary for me to say anything to anybody. I took a client. He paid me. He left.” Morgan shrugs and leans back. “What are you going to do, Peter?”

“I don’t—I have plans to steal a ship. I don’t know where I’m heading yet. I don’t know—I need a name.” He swallows hard. “A new name, not Peter, not Ransom. Not…”

“Need any ideas?” Morgan asks, quirking an eyebrow.

Peter’s fingers tighten around the rough fabric of the coat in his hands. “Yes, please.” 

For a few moments, Morgan just takes him in. Not in the reductive way that the radio is scrutinizing his every body part, every scar. Just appreciatively. “With you silhouetted against the window… you look almost like an angel yourself, you know.”

Peter stiffens. “No. Not… I’m not the angel. That’s not me.”

“All right, all right.” Morgan shrugs. “Maybe the streetlights aren’t a halo, then. Maybe they’re a crown. Maybe you’re some sort of king.”

King... Royalty. Dignity. Dynasty. Significance. Control. 

“You may be on to something, there.” Trying to shake himself out of his thoughts, out of his panic, out of his hangover, out of his terrifying vulnerability, Peter hoists up the coat and shoves his arms into the sleeves. “I, erm. Really do like that, actually.”

“So? What are you going with?”

Peter lets a thin smile play on his lips, and slowly realizes he’ll be sad to leave this place. Not New Kinshasa, the false home made of lasers and hunger and knives. But this dingy little room, and that half-finished bottle of moon-palm wine, and this solitary kind person in the universe. His heart hurts, but for once, he lets himself feel it.

“For now, at least... my name is Morgan King.” 

And then he turns and is gone, gone, gone.


End file.
